Beaten, Seared, and Sauced (15 page)

“Jonathan, you have a real touch for pasta.” A bunch of the others looked over when they heard him say that, for which I was glad.

After the first week of Skills II, Perillo introduced a new wrinkle into things: We began to make complete meals. One menu might be braised short ribs, polenta, and glazed root vegetables. We’d get a short rib each, a measure of demi-glace and one of stock, and access to the herbs and dry ingredients we’d need. The rib got seared and then put into the stock and demi-glace with reduced wine, tomato paste, a bay leaf, and thyme. The polenta was roasted as the rib cooked. We’d cut and cook the root vegetables—rutabaga, parsnips, white turnips—shock them in cold water and hold them until the last minute, when we’d glaze them with butter in a sauté pan. The kitchen almost always smelled fantastic.

Perillo would walk through the kitchen and, every day, announce, “If you take a shortcut now, you’ll be taking them for the rest of your career.” He never singled anyone out, but you’d do a replay of the steps
you’d just taken, look at what you were doing right then, and what you were about to do, and decide if he was talking to you or not.

The meal needed to be finished at a certain time. They weren’t being served to anyone but ourselves, but it put some effective pressure on us to get it done. You were assigned a specific minute. You had to be standing at Perillo’s table at that minute, your plate hot and arranged as he’d demonstrated, no earlier, no later or you got docked points.

People were constantly late. Liz, an attractive Californian with a gentle face and great skin, whom I liked because she laughed at every moronic joke I made, always seemed to come in a minute after she needed to. She’d rush up to Perillo’s desk, sweating, hair and toque askew, and slam the plate down in front of him, looking up at the clock.

There was a guy in class whom we referred to as Ox. He was tall, stocky, and perpetually confused. We’d be making mashed potatoes and, following some inner dictate, he’d supplement the recipe, sprinkling in spoonfuls of nutmeg or cayenne. He could sear the living shit out of a beef medallion and still have it completely raw inside. The interiors of his chicken were a beautiful shade of sunrise pink. He was at least five minutes late, every day.

And always—always—at ten minutes past his deadline, Perillo would begin to shout, “Carlos, let’s go. You’re ten minutes late. Eleven minutes. You’re bleeding points here. Please, Carlos. Show me mercy. Come on, give me something. Anything. Show me what’s on your plate right now.”

Carlos would ignore him and bring his plate to Perillo when he thought it was ready. No earlier.

I
DISCOVERED SOMETHING
about myself that made a few things at school difficult.

Perillo would walk the length of the classroom while we cooked, telling us to “Taste, taste, taste. Build flavors. Season early. Taste what you’re doing and make the adjustments. Taste, taste, taste.”

I’d always had my preferences for food. I prefer to not eat raw bell peppers. I like onions better when they’re cooked. I prefer white rice to brown.

There are some things I react a little more forcefully to.

During the summer break at school, Nelly and I had some friends over. They brought with them several cheeses that stank alternately of vomit and putrescence. The more corpselike the scent, the greater their enjoyment. Nelly, who doesn’t eat as much of the substance as she’d like, mainly because of my disgust, was delighted. The taste of the stuff, which I do distinctly remember trying as a kid, is a too-intense flood of dairy. Way more creamy than I can really handle. And, of course, with accents of rot. I had to stand well away from the plate they were all gathered around.

Cheese—unless it’s cooked with something—and fish—oily mackerel, bluefish, and salmon especially—induce a low-grade, opaque nausea. That’s really a drag: Those are two foodstuffs you run into with circadian frequency in cooking school.

I’ve tried to do away with the aversions. I read food writer Jeffrey Steingarten’s book
The Man Who Ate Everything
, which claims that it takes about ten encounters with a food you can’t stand to change your stance. At least for little kids. I figured I’d try as an adult and see what happened.

My third dinner at school, in the B&C dining room, I was confronted with a plate of broiled salmon. I drew the tines of my fork through the fillet’s flaking outer layers of pink flesh and cut off a chunk. I would start nipping this aversion right here and now. I ate it. It tasted terrible. I got through six more bites before I admitted defeat.

A few nights later, I did battle with a plate of gravlax, later still more salmon, then sea bass, and tuna. At no point did any of them taste good to me.

And now Perillo had us cooking this stuff. One day, we were given a fillet of salmon to poach in a court bouillon (water, wine, vinegar, bay leaf, carrot, onion, garlic, celery) and serve with a sauce béarnaise.

I made the bouillon and set it to simmer. Then I started the
béarnaise: beat egg yolks with a vinegar–shallot–cracked peppercorn–tarragon reduction; ladle in clarified butter; beat the hell out of it with your whisk; hold it over hot water until you’re ready. When the bouillon was set, I tasted it. It was pretty much all you can expect from water, vinegar, wine, and so on. I tasted the béarnaise. A little rich, a bit thick. I thinned it with a few drops of water. Then I tasted it again. I added some more salt.

The bouillon was now at about 175 degrees. I figured the heat would drop ten or so degrees when I added the fish, which would still be in bounds for proper poaching temperature. I laid the fillet in, gently, and let it poach. Killing time, I stirred the béarnaise. I waited ten minutes, watching the salmon fillet float dumbly around the liquid. The color began to fade and turn from red to pink. At some point near the eleven-minute mark, it looked just done. I removed the salmon from its bath and blotted it dry. I poked it with my finger; it seemed to have the requisite amount of give. Then I put it on a warm plate, sauced it with the béarnaise, grabbed a couple of utensils, and carried the whole thing over to Perillo.

“Hey,” he said, tipping the plate back and forth. “Nice consistency with the sauce.” He cut the fillet open. It had the same appearance as the salmon that had defeated me at those dinners. He tasted it, chewed, and looked at me. “Okay, take a bite.”

I hesitated.

“Do you need a fork? Here.” He handed me a fork.

“No, I have one.” Another couple of silent beats went by.

“Well, the clock’s ticking—let’s go.”

I reached over, cut a piece off, and put it in my mouth. I wrinkled my face.

“Well,” he said. “What do you think?”

“Oh, man,” I answered. “It tastes like …”
Shit? Yes, it does. But no, you better keep it clean
. “It tastes like mud.” He looked distressed. He leaned in with his fork and speared another bite.

“No, no, no,” he said, chewing. “It’s not that bad. Okay, you need a little more tarragon in the béarnaise, but it’s not the end of the world.

Don’t beat yourself up. The salmon’s done really nicely. It’s not mud—you did a nice job.”

I thanked him and walked back to my station. I paid close attention to the color of the fish. I started poking it again and again with my fingers, just to remember the texture of it for next time.

W
E HAD OUR
S
KILLS
II final on the last day of class. There would be a written component after dinner, but during class we’d cook. We’d gotten our menu assignment: beef medallions—sautéed—to be served with a sauce chasseur, along with deep-fried onion rings, potato gratin, and broccolini. I had to present my plate at 5:41.

There were things that could be done in advance. At 4:45, I heated up a gallon of water, salted it heavily when it came to a boil, blanched the broccolini, and shocked it in ice water to keep it green. I rolled it between paper towels and set it off to the side. Later, a few moments before presentation, I’d heat it up with a little butter and a splash of water, season it, and put it on the plate.

For this test, each minute you were off, you lost five points. I had not been off for the two weeks we’d had our appointed times. I’d watched others continually come up two minutes, three minutes, even, with Carlos and Ox, fifteen minutes late.

By 5:00, my gratin had been in the oven for a while. We’d run short of the right type of pan to use, so the one I was forced to employ was too small. The gratin kept bubbling up and over the sides. I could hear the liquid sizzling when it hit the bottom of the oven and smell the burning as it cooked away.

I had been working with Lombardi for three weeks, and I liked him quite a bit as a partner. After an initial feeling-each-other-out period, we watched each other’s back: turned things down when the burner was too high; got supplies, equipment, and ingredients for each other; and stayed out of each other’s way when our minute came to pass. This day, he was set to go about twenty-five minutes before me.

I tied butcher’s string around my medallions to give them some
shape and seasoned them with salt and pepper. I cut up the onions for the onion rings. I chopped some parsley last minute for my partner’s garnish. I wiped my station down. It was about 5:10.

Sauce chasseur was one of the first things we made when Skills II started. It’s usually used for chicken, but tonight it would be plated with the beef. You sauté some mushrooms until they begin to caramelize, throw in some shallots, and wait for them to turn translucent. You take some cognac and white wine, deglaze the pan so all the brown bits come up, and let the liquid reduce by half. You add demi-glace. Cook it for a little bit, strain, and wait until you’re just ready to use it. If you’ve read the recipe instructions correctly, you’d know that some seeded, diced tomatoes get added and briefly simmered, and the whole thing is finished by adding a little butter and stirring until it dissolves.

At 5:25, the oil for the onion rings was way too hot. I turned it down, floured them, then put them into the batter. I’d let them sit for a few until it was time to fry them. I’d taken the gratin out of the oven, where it had been drooling over the edges of the pan, about fifteen minutes earlier. I fired up a pan to sauté the medallions, which I’d let rest after they were done for about seven or eight minutes.

I tasted my sauce. It was a little sharp, but I’d add the butter right before serving, so that sharpness would be blunted. I dribbled a little clarified butter into a sauté pan, waited a moment, and threw the medallions on. I’d had the heat way too high. I pulled the pan off the heat and told myself to put it back on in a moment. Time was beginning to erode much more quickly than I’d anticipated. It was almost 5:30. The onions needed to be fried. I’d forgotten about the broccolini. I fired up another pan to heat it. The kitchen clock was right in my line of sight, and the seconds were liquid and slippery. After a minute or two, the onions went in the oil. When I turned the heat down, I’d accidentally turned it off. They bobbed for a moment with a few timid bubbles popping away at the rings’ edges. I cranked the heat up and put the medallions back on the burner. A skin was forming on the sauce. I was also missing something, and I couldn’t remember what. It was 5:35.

I stopped myself for a second, watching the medallions sear. I tried to bring to mind what it was I knew I needed moments ago. I had no idea. The heat on the onions was back to what I wanted, but the rings I’d thrown in a minute ago were no good—just by looking at them, you could tell they were oil soaked and terrible. The oven was on, the flattops were going full tilt, most of the burners were on; it was pretty hot. I felt two trickles of sweat run between my shoulder blades and I very much wanted a drink of water. I got the old onions out of the oil and tossed some new ones in; they began to brown right away, and I suspected maybe they wouldn’t be entirely done when I had to serve them in five minutes. But then again, five minutes—even as fast as they were evaporating right now—was a pretty long time.

I flipped the medallions, and they looked great: a nice, dark brown sear. I put the broccolini in the appointed pan, dribbled some water over them, and tossed in a generous pat of butter. The butter melted, started to emulsify with the water, and I pushed and pulled the pan so the vegetable would jump and flip and coat itself with the glaze. I seasoned it quickly and put it aside. One task down. It was 5:36.

Some pools of red juice showed on top of the medallions and they came out of the pan to rest. I would have preferred they rest for ten minutes, but it wasn’t going to happen. The oil in the pan was almost smoking, and I poured it out in the compost bin positioned right behind my station. I deglazed the pan with a healthy shot of wine, ladled in some sauce chasseur, checked the onions—another minute, maybe two—and realized what it was I’d forgotten. I grabbed a plate and threw it in the oven to warm up. There. As simple as that: problem alleviated. The sauce was bubbling nicely; the pan came off the stove. 5:38 and counting. I pulled the onions out, shook the basket, tossed the rings into a bowl and pelted them with a handful of salt. The clock said I had about ninety seconds. The plate came out of the oven, a ladleful of sauce went on it, with the two medallions set on top. The gratin—I’d spaced on that one; out of sight, out of … So I cut a wedge with my paring knife and shoveled it alongside the medallions. The broccolini
got plated. I bit into an onion ring—maybe it could have gone another minute, but it was a minute I just did not have.

What I did have was about thirty seconds. There was some sauce on the edge of the plate and I wiped it off with a clean paper towel. Then, strangely, I put the towel to my lips and tasted.

Shit
, I thought.
Dammit
.

It hadn’t been the warm plate I’d forgotten about. The sauce was sharp on my tongue, very acidic. I’d completely forgotten to swirl some butter in to finish it. I’d done some pretty good cooking that afternoon, and it was about to go to ash because I’d forgotten one simple step—one of the most basic steps in finishing a sauce like this—and the doneness of the broccolini, the perfect medium rareness of the beef, the beauty of the gratin was all going to be overshadowed by the lack of a tablespoon of butter.